About Me

Woman, reader, writer, wife, mother of two sons, sister, daughter, aunt, friend, state university professor, historian, Midwesterner by birth but marooned in the South, Chicago Cubs fan, Anglophile, devotee of Bruce Springsteen and the 10th Doctor Who, lover of chocolate and marzipan, registered Democrat, practicing Christian (must practice--can't quite get the hang of it)--and menopausal.
Names have been changed to protect the teenagers. As if.

Thursday, February 28, 2013

Red Prada Shoes

Did you know the pope wears red Prada shoes? The things I learn from The Daily Show.

Except I just googled it, and according to the New York Daily News, the Prada part is incorrect. And it turns out the red shoes are traditional and even liturgical. Damn. Just hate facts. It also turns out that the pope's red Prada shoes have been the subject of much comment, controversy, and internet buzz. And I had no idea. I hate that even more than I hate facts. I don't want to be an Out-Of-Touch Person. I don't want to be my mother, refusing to consider a computer, furious that her grandchildren post photos on Facebook rather than presenting them, framed, at her door. I don't want to be my colleague who hauls gigantic maps into the classroom and then gets all pissed off when he discovers that the metal map clips that used to be on the top of the chalkboard have been removed. "Jim," I say, "I can show you how to get those maps online. You can project them--" He waves his arm and walks away. I really don't want to be that guy.

I do, however, have a stack of books that I really want to read. And movies I want to watch. And I'd like to learn Polish and figure out pot gardening. (Wait. That sounds strange. I mean growing herbs and flowers in pots, not cultivating marijuana. At least, not yet.) Anyway, the point is, there's so little time. Must I spend it mastering the latest technological manual, when I know very well that that technology will be out of date in a year or two? I feel proud, in fact, that I never learned how to set the time on my VCR. What would be the point, now?

But how do you figure out which things have a point and which do not? I thought the Nook had a point but now there are tablets and there's no point, is there? I spent time figuring out the Nook, time that could have been spent learning Polish. Or reading Booker Prize novels. Or growing pot. Or, I dunno, doing great good things. Or at least good things. Instead I mastered the Nook and now there's no point. And the tablet awaits. And I find myself exhausted. Scared. Resentful, really.

My mother. She's there. I have seen the Future and it is She.

Tuesday, February 26, 2013

Crazy Cat Lady

I love my cats.

That scares the shit out of me. I'm not a totally stable person; I fear becoming a Crazy Cat Lady. But I imagine that by the time one is a fully fledged Crazy Cat Lady, one would not be aware of that fact. That's comforting, really. (And why, pray tell, do people not talk about Crazy Dog Ladies? Or Crazy Cat Guys? Definitely some specie-ism and sexism at play here.)

Still, there's something about craziness and cats. Maybe it's that oh-so-old connection between cats and witchcraft. Or maybe it's the weird eyes. Or the whole pouncing thing. I dunno. But I do fear for my sanity when I find myself engaging my cats in conversation and occasionally--just occasionally, mind you--listening to their replies.

Not that I believe a word they say. I'm not crazy, you know.

Sunday, February 24, 2013

Doctor Who Goes to the Oscars

It's Oscar night. All America is watching the Oscars. I am watching Doctor Who Revisited on BBC-America. Dear God, thank you for the BBC.

I'm supposed to be at an Oscars-viewing party but I am home nursing two sick cats and an incipient case of massive depression.  I'm the depressed one; the kitties just have a rather disgusting pooping problem.

I'd rather have a pooping problem. Tho' actually, to be perfectly honest, pooping problems are somewhat intrinsic to depression. You get depressed; your tummy gets its own version; you have pooping problems. But I am totally not blogging about that.

Depression. I am blogging about depression. (You thought it was the Oscars, didn't you? Bwah hah hah!) Here's the thing: I fight constantly against depression. Tonight, tho', depression gets a victory. Just a minor one, mind you [she types confidently]. I am staging a tactical retreat. My reserves are exhausted; I await reinforcements; I flee back to the ramparts.

In other words, I empty the house (sick kitties don't count) and I watch Doctor Who. Tomorrow I resume the fight. I will claim happiness. I will be fun and funny; I will have the energy for my fellow human beings. Tonight. . . tonight,  I need Time Lords and aliens.

Is it bad to prefer the company of Daleks and Cybermen to actual friends and family members? Perhaps a wee bit insane? OK, yes, I do realize the correct answer is "yes." Choosing fantasy aliens is probably not high on the list of acceptable responses to depression. But you know, this is the great thing about facing down 50: The boundaries of "acceptable" prove to be more and more elastic.

At this rate, by the time I hit 60 I'll no longer leave the house and I'll talk only to my cats. Still, cats are Doctor Who fans (I mean, it's obvious). So, all will be well. Maybe in a bizarre, slightly twisted, not exactly normal way, but I no longer aspire toward normalcy. Just being well. And if wellness involves time travel and incredibly sexy aliens and huge doses of fantasy (as well as incontinent kitties), so what?

Geez louise. Go see Silver Linings Playbook (it's up for the Oscar for Best Picture). Then explain to me how to define "normal."

Friday, February 22, 2013

Cashmere

Home from work on a Friday. I kick off my boots, take off my belt, pour a glass of wine. It's chilly in the house so I reach up in my closet for my 15-year-old shabby sweatshirt. . . but then I pause; my hand hovers--and I pull down my cashmere shawl. Or scarf. It works both ways. It's richly colored and feather-light and miraculously warm and threaded with the love of the friend who carried it all the way from India to England and across the Atlantic to me.

In the sweatshirt, I schlepp. In the shawl, I swan.

In the sweatshirt, I collapse on the couch in a heap, suck down my wine, and look around wildly for potato chips. In the shawl, I lounge elegantly on the sofa. I sip. I bite delicately into the occasional stuffed olive.

But then, swanning from living room back to kitchen (need more olives), I am suddenly overcome with ambition. I aspire not simply to swan  but to float regally and beneficently, to. . . to. . .to waft, dammit! I want to be one of those wafting women whose shoes always finish off their outfits, who remember everyone's names, who never burst out into shrieking laughter at inappropriate moments.

Oh hell.

I will never waft.

I see that. I accept that.

But for far too long I have squandered my days in schlepping. And I now possess a kick-ass, genuine-article, love-laden cashmere scarf. With said scarf artfully draped about me,  I will swan through my second half-century. It's a promise.

Saturday, February 16, 2013

Zoe smiled at me!

Over two decades ago, shortly after I gave birth to Owen, a friend sent us a marvelous baby gift--what must have been the first book of collected Baby Blues comic strips (I believe there are dozens now). Nothing else quite captured the confusion, exhaustion, bewilderment, the sheer "what-the-fuck-have-we-gotten-ourselves-into" of those initial weeks of parenthood. In the strip, Darryl and Wanda's first month with colicky baby Zoe are just hellish (but hilarious), and then comes The Day: The first three frames show Darryl going through his normal routine but he's walking on air, he's floating, and he has this permanent goofy grin.The final frame includes the text balloon: "Zoe smiled at me!" 

I thought of that comic strip yesterday. I got my haircut in the morning and then had a hectic but totally unproductive and unsatisfying day. I came home feeling cranky and stupid, and then I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror with my short, short hair, and I thought, "Oh god, I've turned into one of those haggard academics with the what-the-hell hair." I turned around and there was Hugh. I'll be honest: despite my cheery "Hi honey! How are you?", inside I was cringing. Hugh is 17 and therefore brutal. "You're not wearing that, are you?" "Don't you think it's time you updated your shoes to at least the 1990s?" "No offense, but you look really fat in that." "No offense, but your gray roots are totally showing." "No offense, but those leggings are for someone wayyyyy younger, you know."

I waited for the put-down.

But then, well, Zoe smiled at me:

Hugh: "You got your hair cut!"
Me: "Ye-e-e-s."
Hugh: "You look really good!"
Stunned silence.
Hugh: "You look just like Anne!"

Anne. My fiercely fit, uber-urban, totally trendy, gobsmackingly gorgeous 30-something niece.

I walked on air, I floated, all evening long.

Tuesday, February 12, 2013

Being a Mom on Mardi Gras

We went to New Orleans for Mardi Gras and didn't see a single parade.

How pitiful is that?

Now mind you, we've seen hundreds, maybe thousands, of parades over the years. By some standards, we are Mardi Gras experts Moreover, there doesn't seem to be much hope that we'll be living anywhere else anytime soon, so we have many, many more Mardi Gras opportunities ahead. Still, why trek out to New Orleans, why pay for a hotel room, why shove our way through the crowds--if not to join in the celebration?

Because, dear reader, we were, once again. tricked. Duped. Manipulated. Hoodwinked. Fooled and  flummoxed. Yet again teenaged Hugh pulled our strings and made us dance to his music.

Supposedly we were enjoying our last Mardi Gras with Hugh before he grows up and heads off to college. Supposedly we were introducing his classmate to the Mardi Gras experience--parades costumes and beads and masks and marching bands and "throw me something, mister!" In actuality, we were paying ridiculous sums of money to allow two horny teenaged boys to hook up with a crowd of nubile young things who attend the girls' school across the street. No parades, no interest in parades, just lots of masterful twisting and turning, flipping and flopping, obscuring and obfuscating, until we're left, a couple of confused, middle-aged, well-meaning souls, wondering why we're sitting in this ridiculously priced hotel room at 11 pm and where is our son and how in the hell did we let this happen again? Goldangit and goddammit. Why are we still so friggin' bad at this?

Monday, February 11, 2013

Earth Tones

I'm a primary-colors sort of person, drawn to kitchens done in black and white with splashes of red or bright blue. We, however, have a Craftsman-style old house, complete with original wall stencils, and so decided to stick with earth tones to reinforce the "in harmony with nature" feel of the building. Somewhat to my surprise, then, I'm comfortably ensconced in muted olives and forest greens, rich browns, dusky oranges. It's all good, except for one eensy-teensy detail:

Cat poo comes in earth tones.

Cat poo, therefore, blends in perfectly--is, in fact, indistinguishable, even invisible, when resting on our rugs and even wood floors.

This has become A Problem.

Our once shy but affectionate and completely litter-box oriented kitty has taken to pooping all over the house. Because we can't figure out what's wrong, I now call her Menopausal Kitty--I figure I blame everything weird about my physical, mental, and emotional states on menopause, so why not the kitty, too?

Meanwhile, I'm adapting. Evolving, really. I now step with such lightness, such tentativity (there is no such word, but there should be), that my foot can hit poo and rebound so quickly that not a speck of poo adheres to my sock. Perhaps over eons I could pass this adaptation on to my offspring, and womankind and pooing kittykind could live in ecological harmony.

But I don't have eons and the males in the household remain their primitive stomping selves. Oblivious to the squish and stink, they track kitty poo around the entire house and are utterly amazed when I point out the fecal footprints.  Do men never look down? Is there something in testosterone that prevents the neck from bending? Given this male intransigence and my own growing impatience with scraping cat poop out of the rugs, Menopausal Kitty's future as an indoor cat looks limited.

Which makes me a bit nervous. Now granted, I have yet to poop in odd places but I do find myself and my body doing the strangest things. How long, then, before I'm mewing pitifully on the back porch, wondering why no one will open the door and let me inside?

And suddenly I get the point of male obliviousness--this wonderful evolutionary adaptation, this remarkable means of ensuring ecological harmony between the male species and menopausal womankind.

Sunday, February 10, 2013

A Full Plate

Oh hell. I am such a Bad Blogger. I meant to be regular. I really did. But I've just been too exhausted even to think about typing a coherent, let alone interesting or God forbid I aspire to such a thing, meaningful sentence when I return home in the evenings. Which gets me to wondering, why am I so friggin' tired all the friggin' time? Here are the answers that spring to mind:

1. I've loaded way too much work on my plate.

This obvious answer, however, begs the question:  Why did I do this? I actually used to be extremely good at time management, at realistically assessing my schedule, at saying no. So why have I, in my second half-century, suddenly lost those useful skills?

Which brings me to

2. I have this sense of "if not now, then never," this new urgency, this fear that the sand is plummeting through the hour glass at an ever-escalating rate, and there's just so much I want to do, to finish, to start, to try. I have no delusions about myself. I'm not one of those scholars whose work will change the way people think. But there are courses I'd like to devise and techniques I'd like to try and curricular reforms I'd like to help make happen and yes, books I'd like to write. There are questions I'd like to answer. Shoot, there are questions I'd like to ask.

But I don't have time to ask those questions because I've loaded so much on my plate that all I can do is keep cutting and biting and chewing and swallowing, no time to savor any textures or flavors, no pause for digestion, just keep forking it in in hopes that eventually the plate will be bare. Except instead it gets ever more crowded, gravy seeping onto salad, bread rolls piled high atop the grilled tofu, as I keep on taking more and more helpings, ever more anxious that if I refuse, I'll never ever have the chance to try that particular pasta or taste that sort of chocolate mousse and I will die, encumbered by pasta regret and dreams of deferred mousse.